The eleventh of September is not a holiday, but something like Kristallnacht, Pearl Harbor, Columbine. It is a marked day, not observed in celebration or the giving of gifts, search for eggs, decoration of a tree, a journey through the neighborhood collecting candy door to door, a parade, fireworks, a turkey, a groundhog’s shadow. For the past two years, it has been remembered by the replaying of horrendous footage, tearful eulogies for the all too suddenly dead, higher levels of national security, all media reminding the public to be afraid, to watch out for the enemy that may live amongst you, to justify the war in Iraq, to revisit the emotional onslaught of the tragedy, in order to bolster your patriotism, get your reptilian brain to respond to the fight or flight instinct and prepare for vigilante justice.
The basic problem in the war on terrorism, is that we don’t know who, what, where, how to fight. There is an enemy, but unlike other warring tribes, they don’t seem to be a nation. So instead, we hit the countries from which we have the most to gain by military takeover. Oil, that is, Texas Tea – gets replaced by Iraqi Instant. Lives are claimed in the name of SUVs and Humvees, for in our culture, a few deaths are nothing compared to maintaining a certain quality of life for the survivors. The American troops dispatched are considered a disposable commodity, as they are mostly made up of kids from lower income families, minorities, those struggling to make money for college, turning to the military, when there is nowhere else to go. They are also the offspring of families with a long tradition serving in the armed forces, the family business marking time in WWII, Korea, Vietnam, Operation Desert Storm. Of course, there are the overly, scarily patriotic jugheads who cannot imagine a life without the right to legally kill people, but mostly, the troops are made up of innocent children, and if you see their faces on CNN, many look positively embryonic. I wonder if it is just that syndrome, that as you age, everyone else seems to look younger than you did at that time, but still, these kids look like they just started to walk.
Some study noted that only one politician’s child in the whole of Congress was actually in the line of fire in this war. The children of Washington’s elite never had to see the battlefield, as they spent spring break from Harvard and Yale being hospitalized for alcohol poisoning in the Hamptons. Thankfully, as if this is even a reason for gratitude, there were fewer casualties in battle than there were here at home.
The victims of this ‘war’ were truly the civilians killed at the World Trade Center, the Pentagon, in the small field out in Pennsylvania. Just folks, going to work, to Disneyland, to visit family – not to mention the multitudes that rushed in to save them, only to find they could not even save themselves. The fearsome sight that haunts me the most is the man in the black suit and tie, falling to his death from the towers. He looks perfectly posed, as if he is mid-flight, expensive jacket open to showcase his perfectly tucked in white button down oxford, a businessman who before he hits the ground will rip off his disguise and show us all that he is Superman. But this isn’t Smallville. His costume never opened to reveal the “S”. He joined the ranks of those who didn’t make it out. Who won’t ever get to tell the story of what it was like, how he felt, if he was afraid, who he was thinking about, who he wanted to say goodbye to. I think about him often, this man, whom I do not know and will never know now, as he is a symbol of a world spun out of control, with Orson Welles as chief correspondent, watching as we ring around the rosy, and we all fall down.